I was hoping that I could tell you if my experiment concerning winemaking with frozen elderflowers had succeeded. Unfortunately I still did not fing the time to bottle this wine. So I hope I can give you a positive answer just before I go on a holliday.So now I have a problem. The elderflowers are not blossomming over here yet. And I do want to make a lot of wine from them. However I am going on a holliday within 2 weeks. So my time-schedule is very tight and I am not sure I can make the wine in that short span. Moer as they are even not blooming yet. So my hope is in freezing a lot of elderflowers before I go on a holliday. However I am not sure that that will work, as I have not tasted the elderfloewer wine I made from last yeasr frozen elderflowers..........

In the mean time, pick the elderflowers and make the wine !!! you will be richly rewarded. And make a lot, it vanishes like snow before the sun. Last year I made 60 liter (16 gallon) and that was gone before the end of the year !!!You can find my elderflower recipe in the archive (on the left), look for the may 2009 section.

Now I was planning to do a short story on my trip to Brouwland In Belgium this weekend. However the weather was so nice that I decided it would be a shame sitting inside writing a story. So instead I took a long bicycle trip this afternoon, of about 30 miles, and I saw roses blossom everywhere. Hence this story.

Roses are blooming again, and I am lucky to have an enormous field of roses within an hour bicycling from my home. Something I can not refuse to pass by.

First the most important tip: make sure you pick the petals from rose bushes that not have been sprayed with insecticides !!!

Not all of you are in the same lucky position as I am, meaning that often you can not pick enough rose petals at one time to make wine with. De bushes are to far apart, or there are just not enough roses and you will have to wait till enough of them are blooming again.No sweat. Rose petals can be cleaned and frozen.You can keep them in the freezer from a few months to over year.

If you decide to freeze the petals for later use then devide them in portions of 70 gram. Put each portion in a separate zip-lock bag. That way you will have a known quantity at hand for later use.

You can use white or red rose petals. The color of the petals decide which color the wine will be.

Preferably choose the strong smelling roses. They will give the best flavor to your wine.

Rose petals bring nothing to the wine except color, flavor and scent. You will have to provide for nutrient, acid and sugar.

Rose petals are very sensitive to sulphite. If you drop the petals in a carboy that has been sanitised with a sulphite solution pink or red petals will turn white. Some literature and info on the web mention that the color will come back after a while. However as I made this wine without using sulphite I can not confirm this.

The rose petals are edible. Bakers have known this for centuries and have used the petals as decoration on cakes.

Enough theoretics. Let's make wine !!!Day 1

If you pick rosepetals and weigh them you will see that a liter in volume weighs 70 gram.For making 10 liter rosepetal wine I used 13 liter rosepetals. In weight that is a total of 910 gram rosepetals.

First I rinsed the petals with clean water to get rid of any insects, sprays and collected exhaust fumes.Next the petals were put in a carboy and I poured 7 liter water on top.The carboy was then sealed with plastic foil fastened with a rubber band.From that moment on the carboy was thoroughly shaken multiple times each day to make sure the color and flavor would get into the water.

The carboy was emptied in a pan. I did this through a sieve which sieved the petals out of the 'tea'. I added 2200 gram sugar and put the pan to a boil.

After a few minutes boiling the must was cooled down. It was now sanitised.

While cooling down I dissolved 10 gram yeast nutrient in the must.

Now my must was almost ready, It had flavor, color, sugar and nutrients. It only lacked acid.

As there are no acids at all in the must I decided to make an acid mix. I used the following quantities:- 27 gram tartaric acid- 20 gram malic acid- 19 gram citric acid.

This was a total of 66 gram acid. I had 10 liter must and this would bring acidity to 6.6

While the must was cooling down I cleaned out the carboy and sanitised it again by swirling a sulphie solution in it. Next I rised it with clean water.When cooled down the must was poured back into the carboy. The yeast starter was added and the carboy was filled up to the max.An hour later it was already fermenting.

Nine weeks later

The wine had finished fermenting and started to clear.

4 months later

The wine had cleared fantastically and was ready to be bottled. It had a very strong rose flavor. It was just perfume. This wine really needed to age !!!!

One and a half year later.

The wine had been patienly waiting and aging. At opening a bottle I smelled roses. The taste had become really mild. It does not resembled perfume anymore. It had become a really nice blush wine with a hint of roses. Definitely recommended and worth waiting for.

Spring over here is disastrous. It is cold and wet. Therefore I had not a lot of opportunities to harvest dandelions, and is the elder not yet blooming. That is very sad. I am planning to go on a holliday witin a month, and I had planned to make 90 liter elderflower wine before that. Indeed 90 liter as last year's 60 liter have been gone long ago, so good was it. Look in last years May entries for an easy elderflower harvesting method and my elderflower recipe. Now if I can not harvest any elderflowers or can not harvest them in time, I do not have enough time left to make the wine.Freezing the elderflowers is an option. I did that last year, and just a few weeks ago I made a wine with the frozen elderflower petals of last year. I hope to be able to tell you if the wine was successfull before the end of the month.In the mean time I have a recipe below that is meant for the brave amongst you.

Sometimes you want to try something special. And I found just that on the net. A recipe for making wine with chocolate. Not directly something I could imagine a flavor with, however I decided to jump the bandwagon.

Now chunks of chocolate are not soluble in water, so the recipe prescribed cacao powder.Cacao powder is used a lot over here to make chocolate-milk. That is however milk-based and milk is part fat. Pure cacao dissolved in water does not give a pleasant result. The pairing of milk and cacao gives the best flavor.Nevertheless there are circulating some very enthousiastic stories on the web about this wine.So I decided to make 10 liter as an experiment.

Beware that this will be an expensive wine compared to all my previous recipes. The ingredients used (honey, cherries, citrus juice and cacao) are relatively expensive.

Day 1

I started as usual by making a yeast starter, using my proven method. You can re-read my story on making a yeast starter byclicking here.

Day 2

The next day the starter was fermenting vigorously, so time to make the wine.

I started by pouring 8 jars with each containing 450 gram of honey in a large pan. I added 2,5 liter water and while stirring brought it to a boil. Stirring is important. When you do not stir the honey might stick to the bottom of the pan and caramellise.

When the honey-water mixture boiled I took it off the stove and let it slowly cool down. While cooling down I added 15 gram nutrient.

A wine also needs some acidity. I decided to add lemon juice for acidity. Two bottles of 200 ml each were poured into the cooling must. These 400 ml lemon juice would, according to my calculations, bring acidity to a level of .4The lemon juice together with the acidity of the, yet to be mixed in, cherries would bring the total acidity to an acceptable level.

Please be aware that in the Netherlands bottles of lemonjuice conatin sulphites as a preservation means. This may also be the case in your country. Now the amount of sulphite will not influence or wine as it will be minimal in relation to the 10 liter wine we are making. However when you are allergic for sulphites you should use fresh lemon juice or citric acid.

Like I said it is of course possible to use citric acid, or the juice of fresh lemons in stead of lemon juice out of bottles. If you want to know how much citric acid you should use, or in general want to know how to exchange citric acid for lemon juice you should read my story about this by clicking here.

Next I opened the cans of cherries and added the juice to the still cooling must. The cherries themselves were put apart.

Next I poured 375 gram cacao in a large bowl and added 500 ml water. I put the mixer in the bowl and ..................

Well an hour later I had cleaned the kitchen and learned a valuable lesson: never mix cacao and water in an open bowl..........

So I started this part over. I put the 375 gram cacao in a high measuring beaker and added 500 ml water. Then I mixed it until it became some sort of chocolate porridge.

Next it was the cherries turn. I put them in a large bowl and mashed them with a potatoe masher. The cherry pulp was put into a nylon stocking which was closed with a knot.Then all prepared ingredients were poured in a large primary.

After tyhe must had cooled down to room temperature I added a teaspoon of pectic enzyme.

Day 3

In the morning I added the yeast starter to the must in the primary.

In the evening when I got home from work the must was fermenting. From that moment on the must was stirred at least twice a day.

14 Days later.

Pulp fermenting had now been going on for 2 weeks and I decided it was time to transfer the must to a secondary.

I took the nylon stocking (with the remains of the cherries) out of the must and slichtly pressed it by hand. I did this above the primary so all juice flowed right back in.

Next the juice was sieved using my bucketsieve and transferred to a carboy with an airlock.

Each winemaker needs a good sieve at some point in winemaking. A normal kitchen sieve does the job, however it is often too small to sieve large volumes. So for large volume's I always use my home build bucket sieve. Really simple to build (even I could do it) and very efficient. If you want to know how to build a bucket sieve yourself click here.

The carboy was filled with water to the brim and therefore contained 10 liter water.

As the must had been pulp-fermenting for 2 weeks fermentation was slow.3 Months later

The wine had finished fermenting and had cleared. There was a thick layer of sediment, and I thought it was time to transfer it to an empty carboy. After racking I had to add half a liter water to replace the lees that were left behind. It is off course possible to fill up with a neutral wine, however the expected high alcohol level and full flavor i decided to fill up with water.

6 Months later

Time to bottle. During bottling I could not resist to take a sip. The wine was definitely chocolatty, next the cherry flavor came along. This wine really needs to age.

1 Year later

While writing this story I am wondering wether or not to publish it. I just don't like the wine.At opening the bottle you will immediately smell chocolate. No cherries to be found anymore. The wine has a strange aftertaste. Totally undefined however outspoken.Then again it is all a matter of taste. The internet lists several winemakers that are very enthousiastic about this wine.And remember the 30 liter pumpkin wine I simply poured down the drain. There are many that find pumkin wine deliscious.And there are many that do not like dandelion wine at all, and I really love it.So make your own choice.

Another possibillity is that this wine needs to age more, just like my apricot wine that needed 3 year aging.

So I will not pour this chocolate-cherry-honey wine down the drain, and give it a few more years.